1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is in the field of customer relations management and pertains more particularly to a system and method for managing customer experience during live interaction based on perceived and established need.
2. Discussion of the State of the Art
Customer service is the art of relating to customers in business. Many enterprises have learned that in order for expansion to be meaningful in terms of revenue increases and profitability, customer-centric business practices must be adopted. Customer-centric business practices attempt to improve the experience of a customer by first identifying and rectifying any problems or issues that might be affecting the business-to-customer relationship, and then by providing state of art services to the customer in ways that best improve the experience of the customer.
Customer experience is key to customer retention in many businesses. High quality of service and timely rectification of problems, mistakes, and misunderstandings can lead to highly satisfied customers who will contribute much more revenue that dissatisfied customers. The most common enterprise condition that generally leads to chronic customer dissatisfaction is company indifference. Once a customer is unhappy, they may not indicate their dissatisfaction. In many cases they just stop doing business with the company. They also tend to tell their experience to other potential customers, which can be an undesirable side effect of company indifference or neglect.
It has occurred to many companies that the customer experience can be improved by an enterprise if the customer experience can be captured and reviewed to see, for example, what may have transpired that produced a positive result or a negative result as the case may be. Therefore it is commonplace for a company doing business with customers to monitor calls in a call center environment to determine quality of service to the customer. In many cases only a percentage of calls are monitored, typically by a live person such as a supervisor. The human operator is then responsible for recording the result of the calls he or she is charged with monitoring.
Generally speaking, in a call center it is common for call result data to be gathered at some later point in time after interaction has occurred. The data can be analyzed in the context of the customer experience to try and determine common weaknesses in customer service, agent training, policy, and so on so that improvements may then be designed and implemented for future interaction, hopefully improving future experiences of the customer.
Companies often overlook how a customer is actually getting along exactly at the time of interaction with a live agent. The live attendant is focused generally on a specific goal related to the call and may not be particularly perceptive to what the customer may be experiencing.
Therefore, what is clearly needed in the art is a system that monitors the experience of the customer during live interaction, recognizing specific conditions or states of the customer, and using the information to alter agent scripting on the fly to achieve a better experience for the customer.